An hour after t.i.tus collapsed into bed and instantly fell asleep, despite the adrenaline high of his ordeal, his a.s.sistant, Carla Elster, rolled over in her bed several valleys north and looked out the window at the pale dawn. The radio alarm had just come on, and she listened to Bob Edwards on NPR intone something about a congressional hearing. She let herself stay in bed until the end of the story, which couldn't have been more than three minutes long, and then threw back the covers.

She reached for her cotton robe on the chair beside the bed, slipped it on, and tied the sash in a slipknot. She padded into the bathroom, where she washed her face, brushed her hair, and then brushed her teeth with her left hand on her hip as she examined her face in the mirror and a.s.sessed the impact of the years.

Telling herself to h.e.l.l with that, she turned and went out into the hallway and down the stairs to the kitchen, where the coffee would just be finishing. She poured herself a cup, added half-and-half from the refrigerator, and carried the mug with her out the front door to get the paper.

Back inside, she sat at the kitchen table and read the headlines of The New York Times The New York Times . She couldn't concentrate on the articles because her mind kept going back to t.i.tus, as it had throughout the night. She couldn't stop worrying about him. Something was seriously wrong. She didn't believe the bad investment story, of course. But the most remarkable thing about it was that whatever was happening, t.i.tus thought it was necessary to ruin his own reputation to cover it up. That must have killed him, and it pained her deeply that he felt he had to do that. . She couldn't concentrate on the articles because her mind kept going back to t.i.tus, as it had throughout the night. She couldn't stop worrying about him. Something was seriously wrong. She didn't believe the bad investment story, of course. But the most remarkable thing about it was that whatever was happening, t.i.tus thought it was necessary to ruin his own reputation to cover it up. That must have killed him, and it pained her deeply that he felt he had to do that.

And those guys with the headphones, were they checking for electronic bugs? That's what it looked like, and t.i.tus had completely ignored her pointed questions about it. Even more curious was his immediate insistence that his financial worries were personal. That made her suspect they weren't.

She changed into jogging clothes, still thinking of t.i.tus and Rita. Although Rita's disturbed behavior was understandable, given the death of Charlie Thrush and the news about t.i.tus's financial troubles, she seemed more agitated and abrupt than distraught.

At the bottom of the stairs she stopped by the secretary's desk in the front hallway to pick up her epinephrine injector, which she kept in a small sack and wore on a string around her neck when she jogged. She checked her watch as she headed down the front sidewalk and then hit the street, taking off at a slow lope.

There were sections of West Lake Hills, an incorporated town on Austin's southwest side, that felt almost rural, their narrow, winding lanes climbing the heavily wooded hills and then twisting down into the valleys. The homes themselves were often hidden from the lanes, and it wasn't unusual to jog for many blocks without seeing any of the homes at all.

Carla's route was a secluded course, and she looked forward to her peaceful early morning regimen. She liked the time alone, because once she got to CaiText it was nonstop until she returned home exhausted in the evening.

Twenty minutes into her run, as she rounded a corner at an intersection, a man was warming up at the entrance to his drive that led deeper into the woods. He fell in behind her for half a block back as she turned into a smaller street. Another half block ahead of her a woman emerged from a hedge flanking the front sidewalk of one of the homes and began jogging in front of her, though at a slower pace.

Just as Carla was about to overtake her, she heard the man coming up fast behind her. She slowed just as she was approaching the woman so that the three of them wouldn't be three abreast on the small lane as the man pa.s.sed.

But he didn't pa.s.s. The woman whirled around and embraced Carla and spun her around. The man was on her instantly, stuffing a ball of foam into her mouth, and then the two of them literally carried her into the dense woods that crowded up against the lane.

Stunned, Carla didn't even know how much she struggled, but she was aware of fighting, though she was soon pinned down. The woman pulled down the neck of Carla's sports bra, and the man produced a net bag that emitted a sound that horrified her: a constant, quavering buzz.

Carefully the man placed the opening of the bag next to her left upper breast, and she went berserk. But she just wasn't strong enough. The hornets stung her repeatedly before the man moved the net down to her bare stomach, where he held it firmly against her as they stung her again.

That was all.

Then the man and woman simply held her. The man looked at his watch, and they all waited. The welts on her breast and stomach burned fiercely, as though hot coals had been spilled on her, and because she was already sweaty, they itched wildly.

They lay there, the three of them, in the tall gra.s.s a few yards into the woods, in a weird, mad embrace, waiting. What was happening? Why were they doing this? She could smell the man's aftershave, and she could feel the woman's soft b.r.e.a.s.t.s against her bare shoulder. The mind-numbing why of it was as stupefying as was the terror of waiting for the allergic reaction to kick in.

This was incomprehensible.

She tried to see their faces, but she couldn't. Why wouldn't they let her see their faces? If they were trying to kill her, what would it matter? Kill her?! Was that ... could that really be their intent? That's what they were doing, but was that what they meant to do?

That made no more sense than if one of them were a b.u.t.terfly.

Her allergy was acute, so the symptoms struck quickly. She began to feel her throat close up, and then her lungs seemed to collapse, as if they couldn't retain enough oxygen. She felt the quiverings of panic and coughed through the foam ball. Her stomach began to cramp, long, hard contractions of her muscles. She felt light-headed, and her heart revved up to an incredible speed.

She felt one of them remove the epinephrine injector from around her neck. Were they going to save her after all?

Suddenly she felt as if time had accelerated at an incredible velocity. She knew she had twenty minutes at most. The couple embraced her like oddly impa.s.sioned friends. The idea of how the three of them might look to someone pa.s.sing by flashed through her mind. Beyond strange. She felt their warm flesh against her own. So intimate. She could hear them breathing. Or was that her?

As she began to fade in and out, it seemed that they loosened their grip on her. Was that just because she was losing consciousness, or were they actually doing that? Inexplicably she thought of her ex-husband with an angerless regret. She thought of the girls. They would be all right. She had gotten through the tough years with them, and they were leveling out. The rest of it was going to be okay. Nathan. Bless his heart. He would be dumbfounded.

There was a moment of brilliant, mind-blinding panic, and she fought her abductors. And she fought her departure. Of all the silly things to happen to her ... Who would've thought it would be something like this, something so profoundly, utterly mystifying?

Well, she was glad she'd taken the dark sable brown suit to the cleaners. That's the one the girls would choose. But Nathan would have to think of it being at the cleaners when they couldn't find it in her closet.

Suddenly her head was bursting, and she felt nauseated. And she was so hot!

Chapter 31.

t.i.tus was shaving, a towel wrapped around his waist. His neck was stiff despite the long shower he'd taken to try to loosen it up. A cup of coffee sat on the countertop by his shaving mug, along with a half-eaten piece of toast. The outside of his eyebrow was swollen, and the flesh around it was purple. He looked out the gla.s.s wall to the pool, feeling thickheaded. The four hours of sleep had felt exactly like four hours of sleep: not enough.

Nevertheless, he had to admit the conversation with Garcia Burden in the small hours of the morning had been fascinating. Burden had made good points about t.i.tus's concerns that he had done the wrong thing, but he hadn't really offered anything concrete. t.i.tus still had that uneasy feeling that his decision to work with Burden was going to result in yet more tragedy. But, as with Burden, he couldn't come up with any specific, factual data to justify his anxiety.

He washed the lather off his face and walked into his closet to get his clothes. After dressing, he felt a little less fuzzy headed as he made his way along the atrium to the kitchen. Rita was again sitting at the island, nursing a gla.s.s of orange juice.

"You want anything besides that piece of toast? "she asked. She, too, looked exhausted.

"No, I'm fine, "he said, dumping his cold coffee down the sink. He turned around and leaned against the counter.

"How's your head feeling? "Rita asked.

"Lousy."

"Let me see. "She got up from the bar stool and went over to him. He waited while she examined him. She was close, and he could see the blond fuzz along her temples, smell her shampoo.

"The swelling's going to be with you for a while, "she said, returning to the island.

The front gate intercom buzzed behind him on the counter panel, and he reached over and pushed the b.u.t.ton.

"Yes?"

"This is Deputy Seams with the Travis County Sheriff's Office. This Mr. Cain?"

"Yeah. Yes, it is."

"Wonder if you could open the gate for me, Mr. Cain?"

"Uh, sure, "t.i.tus said, frowning and looking over at Rita as he hit the gate b.u.t.ton.

Rita was motionless, her questioning eyes locked on him.

"I don't have any idea, "he said, and headed for the door to the veranda. Rita followed him, and they both stood in the morning shade and watched the sheriff's car come slowly over the rise on the paved drive, seeming to take too long to curve around and approach the turn that brought him behind the high hedges. He pulled up behind Herrin's trucks and turned off the engine.

Oddly, the deputy took off his regulation summer western hat and laid it on the seat of the patrol car before he opened the door. As he got out, the scratch of radio transmissions came with him and then went silent as he closed the door. He looked around as he walked over to the veranda where t.i.tus and Rita were waiting at the edge of the flagstones, under the morning glory vines. Mourning doves soughed in the rows of peach trees in the orchard, their cooing carrying surprisingly far in the morning stillness.

He bobbed his head at Rita and said, "Ma'am, "and then reached out his hand to t.i.tus. "Ward Seams, "he said, dropping the "Deputy."

"I'm t.i.tus Cain. This's my wife, Rita."

Now the deputy bobbed his head at her again and shook hands with her, too. He looked at t.i.tus.

"I'm sorry, "he said, "but I've got some bad news for you, Mr. Cain. I understand Ms. Carla Elster is your personal a.s.sistant?"

t.i.tus could only nod. The only thing that remained for him to know was how it had happened.

"Ms. Elster is dead, Mr. Cain."

Rita gasped, then gasped again, two expurgations of air that sounded as if she'd been hit in the stomach. t.i.tus couldn't respond at all.

Seams talked slowly, carefully, as if he were trying to coax a frightened animal.

"She was found just about an hour ago near her home," he said. "She was lying by the roadside. Been jogging. EMS people tell us it looks like she died of allergic reaction to insect stings."

Incredibly, Rita gasped again. Seams threw a look at her again and then went on.

"She was wearing identification, "he explained. "EMS took her to Seton downtown. I went by the house and neighbors told me her two daughters were out of town for the summer. They told me she worked for CaiText, and the people there told me she worked for you. That you were old friends."

He reached out and put his hand on t.i.tus's shoulder, an unexpected gesture.

"I'm really sorry, Mr. Cain. "And he seemed to be. He looked at Rita again, then back at t.i.tus. "This is hard, I know, but I need to ask you some questions about the girls. We need to talk about how to handle it. Somebody has to tell them. We've got to decide how to go about doing that."

Rita had sat down in one of the wrought-iron chairs in the veranda and was crying as t.i.tus stood and watched the deputy's car go down the drive to the front gate. He watched it until it was out of sight.

What he was feeling was indescribable. It was an emotion like no other, and it grew stranger as he stood under the morning glories and listened to Rita crying softly, even politely, but without consolation. There was a world of bewilderment in her weeping as well as fear and anger and stupefaction and emotions that no one had ever named.

For t.i.tus, though, the overriding feeling was one of nausea driven by an appalling sense of guilt. If he had ... if he had ... if he had ... In an instantaneous swarm of remembrances, he blamed Luquin ... and Gil Norlin ... and Garcia Burden ... and himself for not seeing at every turn where all this was going, for not having enough insight, for not having enough intelligence, for not having enough savvy ... for not having enough guts ...

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it all! "he swore, and wheeled around, his face flushing, his body thrilling with the adrenaline that was exploding through him, driven by the hyperagitation of his own mind. "G.o.dd.a.m.n it! "he repeated, and barged across the veranda and onto the courtyard, headed for the guest house, where Burden had spent what was left of the night instead of going back down the hill.

"t.i.tus! "Rita lifted her head out of her hands. "t.i.tus!" She stood, but she was frozen to the spot.

t.i.tus flung open the door of the guest house with such force that it slammed against the inside wall like a gunshot. His entrance was so volcanic that Herrin and Cline, who were working at computer monitors, actually jumped to their feet in shocked surprise.

"Where the h.e.l.l's Burden, "he demanded, his throat thick with emotion, just as Burden stood up from the sofa where he'd been sitting, his telephone still to his ear.

"Get off the G.o.dd.a.m.ned phone, "t.i.tus barked at him.

Burden said something into the phone and snapped it shut. The two men faced each other.

"You know what just happened?"

"Yeah, "Burden said. "I just found out."

t.i.tus's chest was heaving, his heart pitching, almost squeezing off his ability to speak.

"No more, "he said. "That's it. No more. Not one more. Don't give me any of this s.h.i.t about inevitability. f.u.c.k that. The killings stop here. Right now."

"How do-"

"I'm going to tell you, "t.i.tus said. "You take every bit of information you have on Luquin and his people-which is considerable at this point-and you go to the FBI. Now. Right this minute. You take them everything you have, and you get their tac squads over there and arrest Luquin or kill him, and I don't give a s.h.i.t which. But this insanity stops now!"

"Think about this, t.i.tus-"

"You do this do this now, now, Garcia"-t.i.tus was almost screaming, his voice hoa.r.s.e with heat-"or I will. I don't give a s.h.i.t about your silence or your secrecy or your hidden agendas. No more of my friends are going to die because of this son of a b.i.t.c.h. You don't have any choice. You don't have any say. This is the end of it." Garcia"-t.i.tus was almost screaming, his voice hoa.r.s.e with heat-"or I will. I don't give a s.h.i.t about your silence or your secrecy or your hidden agendas. No more of my friends are going to die because of this son of a b.i.t.c.h. You don't have any choice. You don't have any say. This is the end of it."

Chapter 32.

The guest house was full of electricity, more of it coursing through the people than through the tangle of cables and wires supporting the computers and communications hardware scattered around on makeshift folding tables.

Rita had burst through the door immediately after t.i.tus, and the two of them were standing facing Burden, who, unintimidated, was nodding at them, letting them catch their breath. Mark Herrin and Cline were working feverishly at their computer screens with an improbably fierce concentration. In the midst of this momentary silence, the only sound was the white noise of humming electronics.

"I should never have let this go this far, "t.i.tus said. "My choices led to these deaths. But I'm not going to let it happen anymore."

"So your solution is to pull the plug on all this, "Burden said.

From where he stood, he faced the south side of the large main room, with its high gla.s.s wall that reached to a vaulted ceiling and looked out at the last part of the laurel allee and the peach orchard.

"Look, "he said, running the fingers of one hand through his hair and looking at t.i.tus, "think about this: Knowing what you know now about Luquin, knowing that he had promised you he'd kill people if you went to the FBI"-he paused-"do you think that if you'd gone to the FBI that first night, you would've prevented either of these deaths?"

Burden paused, but he didn't want his answer quite yet. He went on.

"How quickly do you think the FBI would've found Luquin? Literally, how would that have played out? Would they have him yet"-he looked at his watch and then back at t.i.tus-"sixty hours later? Would either of these deaths have been prevented?"

t.i.tus stared at him. His mind was plunging into the problem, but still Burden didn't wait.

"Even if they had arrested him-an impossibility, but let's go ahead with that fantasy for the h.e.l.l of it-would that have prevented these tragic ... accidents?"

Silence.

"Or let's say Luquin would've managed to get out of the country before they found him. Do you think that would've prevented these two deaths?"

Burden glanced at Rita, who was staring at him in brittle silence.

"You need to remember, t.i.tus, that you aren't the only one who's ever had to go through something like this because of this man. Have you forgotten that? And, believe me, I didn't tell you nearly all that I could've. The fact is, as tragedies go, things could've been a h.e.l.l of a lot worse for you, couldn't they."

t.i.tus stared at him, feeling the heat of temper still in his face. He was strung out, pummeled by his own emotions.

Leaving his questions hanging in the air, Burden moved over to the window and looked out. He stayed that way, giving no indication of what he planned to do next.